Traveling Archives - Page 8 of 18

A day in Italy. A story in several parts. And in several parts of Italy.

I cleaned madly and ceremonially closed one set of shutters after the others, and as a final act of love, I talked to the mason about a wall that needs fixing. See, house? We do care, even though we are leaving you here by yourself. Then it is off to the piazza for coffee and hugs goodbye, “tante cose belle!” and we are Siena bound.

cuppa Joe, Simone? coffee at bar gallo, panicale, italy PANICALE, SIENA, FLORENCE – Or, as we say: Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner.

Part one. Breakfast in Panicale.

Today really is the proverbial Movable Feast. Lovely, busy, interesting day. Slightly on the maudlin side to start with because the trip had wound down to these final moments. But, onward and upward, there are many fun things to do today. I cleaned madly and ceremonially closed one set of shutters after the others, and as a final act of love, I talked to the mason about a wall that needs fixing. See, house? We do care, even though we are leaving you here by yourself. Then it is off to the piazza for coffee and hugs goodbye, “tante cose belle!” and we are Siena bound.


Part two. Lunch in Siena.

Pulling into Spannocchia, I see Midge in the midst of a sundrenched tableau. Sitting on a stone bench, her back to a warm stone wall, her friend Gail beside here, other friends left and right, a big shaggy white dog dozing at their feet. I hated to break the spell.

But what the heck.

It was lunch time.

We filled our plates in the kitchen and moved this Magic Moment to the veranda in front of the main villa and just let the sun wash over us. Cukes freshly cut from their vines lying in the warm Tuscan dirt that morning, plus fennel also from the garden and pieces of oranges made up the salad. And see the pasta in red sauce in the photo? Not at all. It’s just not pasta. It is eggs, if you can imagine, cooked like a thin omelet and cut in strips. What will these people think of next? Well, that was all swell but we have places to go and yet more food to eat. And plus, it is time to go. Midge and the Spannocchia board have been to so many meetings they must be getting punchy. Over lunch the conversation turned to cats. Not a good sign in the best of times. And that turned to the potential of cat-a-pults as a way of effecting population control. Everyone slaphappy, we pack and exit stage left.

Pulling out we take a minute to see if we can get into a restaurant in Florence we heard about when we were olive-picking. It is Saturday and some Australian friends said it was great, but tiny and reservations were sort of mandatory. Ok. We’re in. They are expecting a “Mr Stuardo” at seven thirty. That’s me. Stuardo T. Vreeland. And we’ll do that story in an upcoming blog. Stay tuned to this channel for Part Three and Part Four in this Day in the Life series.

Hello, Spello. I see your streets are paved with gold.

spello during corpus domini. spello, Umbria
SPELLO, Umbria, Italy–Midge knows a short cut. There is, evidently, some shopping that has taken place near here. Ceramic-related shopping she thinks. Its early and we take back road after scenic back road through one sleepy town after another. Us and the occasional spandex and logo covered bike rider/professional racer wannabe. Is there any other kind of biker these days? No matter, we’re happy to share the Sunday morning with these few brightly colored fellow travelers.

As I write this later in the garden, bees are buzzing, an orange butterfly lands on my knee. The hummingbird-like bug is putting his long needle nose in the sweet purple lavender, but Focus Stew, Focus. Get us to Spello, already. It is not that far from Panicale but we are such slugs that we’ve never been right there so we’re staying sharp looking for signs. We’re south of Perugia, south of Assisi, but it is before Foligno off 75. I see it! We’ve been driving on the flat agricultural plain around the lake when suddenly, there is Spello looking down on us from its cliff, the houses uniformly pale pink, the color of Bruno’s cactus blossoms. There’s the exit. Gulp. There’s the gridlock. This town is not asleep. It is wide awake and neck deep in cars. We bump up over a curb and onto an available sidewalk, lock up and step away from the Fiat Bravo. Someone right behind us does the same and suddenly those two blocks of sidewalk are filled too. To fortify us for the flowers we sit for a minute in a huge café under a resort hotel. Everything is better after a cappuccino and one of those fruit tarts. We follow crowds across the street and it begins. Just like that. Quiet coffee to full emersion in a festa in a matter of a few feet.

THE STREETS REALLY ARE PAVED IN GOLD. AND RED. AND GREEN. EVERY COLOR UNDER THE SUN.
AT LEAST DURING CORPUS DOMINI.

streets of Spello, Italy are paved with gold during corpus domini
Did I say what we are doing here? Meant to. Happily, it is spring, flowers are everywhere and it is Corpus Domini. Even the catholics among us are not solid on what that all entails. Sounds like Holy Body. But we think it is more in the body as in the host at communion and why not have a flower festival for it? Because, here in Spello they have covered the streets with major sized, highly detailed art made over night from flowers, seeds and petals. Like someone had steamrolled over a Rose Parade float. Its all biblical themed, huge, happy, bright and hard not to be knocked over by the scale. Several are 30 or 40 feet long? I didn’t measure them but they are big, trust me. The teams that did them are proud but not really standing tall, often sitting or laying down. tired flower arrangers of Spello, Italy during Corpus Domini celebration We think they’ve all been up all night doing this. I read one brochure that claimed 2,000 people would be up all night, including several hundred 3-14 year olds. Tradition! And it specifically said they would not be playing about. Flowers to gather, dissect and arrange artfully. During the show there are step ladders and metal viewing stands here and there and people go up, snap a photo, come down and someone else goes up. Some of the teams are spraying their art if they are in full sun to keep them fresh. There are flowers not only below us, but beside us in doorways and over hanging from balconies. And above that, bright blue skies. What a day we fell into here.

The festival is crowded but civilized. We walk wherever we want and see things along whatever path strikes our fancy. Until, suddenly, we’re swept up toward a church and in the distance we can hear a band forlornly playing as the host approaches. A tower full of bells begins to ring, priests trudge by carrying loudspeakers on a pole, someone is chanting, someone on a scratchy recording is singing and eventually the band is right in front of us. Tubas, trumpets, clarinets prevail. The priests wear white and gold robes, Caribinieri are in full dress and that means the Napoleonic hats with red plumes. Canopies, big, tall, old painted canopies sway by protecting the host and everyone shuffles, shuffles, shuffles through the flowers underfoot. One by one, foot by foot, the dirge plays on. The procession rocks from left foot to right in solemn obliteration of the flower designs. Strangely, it does mess them up but it doesn’t ruin them. And the designers, some more than others, rush to pat things back together. In the end it doesn’t matter too much, flower petals are ethereal and destined to dry up and blow away, anyway aren’t they? Luck was with these artists this year as it was perfect out all night, not a hint of breeze and for the first time in a week, no evening showers. (All this weather wonderfullness was reaching its high point after church at 11. By five that afternoon it was pouring buckets, so good timing all around.)

We followed the procession to the park where plant sellers of every stripe were tempting the crowd successfully with their wares. Shoppers were carrying people sized rose bushes to their cars all around us. We found a table of seriously exotic cactus and picked one for Bruno that looked like a pale green softball with long needles marching around its stitching and two big candle-shaped flower buds sticking straight up from the top. Wonder what that will be like when it grows up. We’ll see what Bruno thinks of that.
wonderful colors of spring flowers in Spello display, Spello, Italy
The medieval festival in Bevagna starts today and its just down the road. But, this has been such a star crossed, by the numbers, perfect kind of day that we think we should just go sit in the garden and think about all this. But you know that porchetta place in Corciano? We go right by there . . .

Next time: Andrea shares his Big Three in Gelati. We’ve only been to one so far but we’ll fix that and report back when we have compared at least two of them. They are going to have to do some hustling to beat the peach I just had at Aldo’s!

balcony street watcher in Spello, Italy during corpus domini celebration

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland

LOOK, UP IN THE AIR, IT’S . . .

It’s a bird . . . it’s a plane . . . huh. It IS a plane. Hi, hi, it’s Stew and Midge – winging our way by Ryanair, from Stanstead outside London to Ciampino in Rome. So, how WAS Ryanair you ask?

PANICALE, Umbria– . . . It’s a bird . . . it’s a plane . . . huh. It IS a plane. Hi, hi, it’s Stew and Midge – winging our way by Ryanair, from Stanstead outside London to Ciampino in Rome. So, how WAS Ryanair you ask? Well, gosh, everyone just put the total fear in us of Ryanair. Said it would be gritty and more bare bones than we could possibly imagine. We prepared for the el-cheapo worst. But, it was fine. Can I say this? Will anyone believe me if I say our Ryanair flight was much better than the AA flight we took across the pond. Those AA seats were of finest Corinthian Masonite mixed with construction rubble. Our Ryanair flight on the other hand had comfy leather seats, was clean, clean and clean. Ciampino and Stanstead were both fine. Seemed new and with every service I would expect. And for us, Ciampino was fast. Much calmer than the regular Rome airport. Starting from Ciampino clipped an hour off any drive we have ever taken from Fiumincino. Fiumicino is clear out of town over on the Mediterranean for crying out loud. Ciampino is on the East and just way easier to get to A1 from there. Two hours from Ciampino to Panicale vs at least three hours on any other flight landing at Fiumicino. Maybe just luck. No idea as we have only taken that flight this one time. More news as it becomes available.

We kept following the A1 signs north (Firenze/Napoli) and at a certain point it looked like we could keep following the big green signs north that said Firenze but we also could see an A1 sign to Firenze and we took that. It ended up saying Napoli/Orvieto and was three faultless lanes wide and no trucks to speak of until we got to Orvieto. It may be that we took A1 sooner rather than continue on the “annulare” around Rome. They run rather parallel. Around Orevieto we recognized where we were and started getting regular truck traffic. Regardless, at that point we were the horse sensing his dinner back at the barn and we were galloping down the road. Andrea, (Masolino’s restaurant next to our house) put the kettle on, we’re on our way. Let the festivities and the double kisses around town begin. We’re almost home. We will know we really have arrived when we have settled in and are having lunch in the garden with Kiki. And that is just what we did the first day as you can see. Look how tall the rosemary has grown since we’ve been gone. Do you think it missed us? We can hope.

Can’t tell you what a rush it was to see the New York Times article about Panicale taped to the door of Aldo’s Cafe here. Felt like a part of us had arrived before we did. So negligent in writing. Pouting about needing new experiences on the ground? Maybe that was it, also we were moving and having a graduation for our youngest daughter. When did life get so crazy busy? Our family motto requires it: Having Fun as Fast as We Can. Words to live by. Up to a point!

Ok, I love it when we can really say:

See you in Italy!

Stew Vreeland

Easter in Italy. And in the New York Times

The nicest writer from the New York Times found us via the internet, called us and interviewed us about Easter in Italy. Specifically the Pasquetta fun that happens in Panicale, in Umbria the day after Easter.

NEW YORK–Che shock. We’ve been discovered? The nicest writer from the New York Times found us via the internet, called us and interviewed us about Easter in Italy. Specifically the Pasquetta fun that happens in Panicale, in Umbria the day after Easter. She wrote about us and then passed us over to the photo editor and lo and behold: There we were in the Sunday Travel Section of the New York Times! Fairly unreal seeing our words and pictures in that august publication. And yes, I was at the Yarmouth Texaco station at 6 am that Sunday morning! Getting the traditional “five copies for my mother”. Check out MariaLisa Calta’s whole story at the orange link here.

Our full original story, with additional photos, is here, below.

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland

Things to do on your way to Italy:

Midge and Stew use their daughter, The Wiley Traveler, as an excuse to visit Italy. Oh, wait. She lives in London. OK, we’ll stop there too!

midge and margot at de gournay's showroom in London
LONDON–Can we digress? Oooops, too late. One of the joys of buzzing back and forth to Italy is having the Wiley Traveler in residence in London. So, we use her as an excuse to swoop down into Londontown coming or going to Italy. “It’s right on the way” we nod sagely to each other and Bam! Just like that: we’ve rationalized a trip.

Flowers all around us in Italy last fall (especially roses) made me doodle down notes of a happy, somewhat flower-related adventure that we had in London, on the way to Italy. First, a bit of context: did I mention we bought a new house? We love our house in Italy. It is so not on the market. And I thought we loved our house in Maine that much too. We do love it. We’ve put our hearts and souls into it for 22 years. Raised our three children there quite contentedly. It’s a walk to work, walk to church, walk to cappuccino kind of home. It’s a four story Greek Revival captain’s house overlooking the harbor in our picture postcard New England hometown. Like our Italian home, we found our Maine home abandoned and gently, over the years, brought it back to life. And yet, here we are with it finally, finally finished and we are moving out to the nearby Maine countryside. And renovating an old brick farmhouse, surrounded by woods. Are we insane? Project obsessed? Using the restlessness that comes with onset of the empty nest syndrome as an excuse to scratch a “mid” life crisis itch? All of the above? Who can tell. That is the thing about Love. And especially Love at First Sight. You can’t always get it to make stone hard sense. It just is what it is. And now that we are into it, what is it is an adventure. My sister Gin is doing the painting and papering and decorating. Her partner Jim did our first house and is doing the demo and reno here too.

flights of fancy: wallpapers with wings Anyway, I’m getting to a fun part. We’ve had the usual metric ton of daily decisions to make on that new house as we were running out the door to London and Italy. If we could just pick the wallpaper in the front hall my sister said. Then we could play all the colors in all the rooms around it off that or at least not be in conflict with it. We’d been through stacks of those heavy wallpaper books and weeks later we were still thinking about this one photo in a house magazine. It just shimmered off the page. What the heck is that about? So we called the people listed in the back of the magazine and they sent us a lovely sample. Exotic birds and fantasy flowers, hand painted on pea green silk! They are in downtown New York, at a place called de Gournay. We had just received that nice sample from Melissa while we were in the midst of last minute trip packing details. And she had emailed pages and pages of pdf details to us. I printed them out. Stuck them in my computer bag. And ran out the door.

A few hours later, somewhere over the Atlantic, I was showing de Gournay’s paperwork to Midge and noticed the official address on every page: London. You mean the London where this plane is headed? That one? And the showroom appeared to be a block from the first stop on the Wiley Traveler’s itinerary for us: Victoria & Albert Museum. Kismet or what? That is exactly what we thought.

We worked our way there, surprised how close to our hotel it was and knocked on the locked door to be let in. They knew who we were and let us in anyway. I don’t know if they were just trying to make us feel at home or not, but they had one whole floor under renovation – and it was as noisy as our project in Maine. We quickly tuned that right out and like kids in a candy shop just ate this whole showroom right up. How fun it was to see rooms of these wonderful papers in situ. They are mostly flora and fauna done in a Chinese style and based on classic papers in old English manors. Very other worldly and dreamy/exotic stuff. The sample we have makes us feel like we have brought a shimmering piece of the outdoors directly into the house.

This is something from the art and renovation world that I so did not know about. They paint these papers to order. In China. You can see pencil marks where they have roughed in the design. They make the design fit your exact walls. Allowing for doors, windows etc. Can you believe that? Neither could we. It is like interactive wallpaper. It is not free and if you were doing an entire Manor House in it you could just as easily find yourself in the Poore House instead. But we were just thinking of a bit of it for part of one wall, in one hall and small as that is, we may decide give ourselves a house warming present. Thinking about it and learning about this whole new world of design possibilities was very exciting.

We now return you to your regular Italian programming.

See you in Italy,

Stew